Pet of the Month

Luke and his splenic mass.

Luke came to the surgery because he had had a wobbly episode and been stiff getting up on his back legs. He was examined by James the vet and had some arthritis but no nerve problem, arthritis or heart problem sufficient to explain the episode. However feeling his abdomen the edge of his spleen felt large and Luke had appeared to have put on weight around his tummy as he got older.

Luke came back in for a recheck with James the following week having been fine. However the spleen still felt larger than normal, especially as today he hadn’t had any breakfast which can make the stomach push the spleen out (the spleen normally wraps around the stomach).

Luke was admitted for a scan of his abdomen which showed a large 15cm mass in his spleen and we were very worried he might have a nasty kind of cancer called haemangiosarcoma. Fortunately there were no signs of any metastases (spread) to the liver on the same scan.

Luke was then anaesthetised and x-rays taken of his chest and abdomen. The chest radiographs showed no signs of any tumour spread to his lungs, but the mass in his spleen is very obvious on the x-ray below.


The arrow points to the large mass; it has displaced all his intestines up and backwards out of the way.
 


Luke was operated on to remove the mass which went successfully, and no signs of any other spread were found exploring his abdomen.
Pieces of the mass were sent away to be examined by a pathologist to see what it was. The report was great- it was a splenic nodular hyperplasia and infarction. This is not a cancerous mass, but blood vessels running through it have blocked allowing tissue to die off and bleeding into the middle of the spleen to occur which made the large mass found in his abdomen.

Luke has made a full recovery as this picture of him looking to get out of the surgery shows.